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Four Months Before
October 2018
I’m sorry, Mom. I can’t come home for the holidays. It’s just not in the cards this year.” Penny winced as she broke the news to her mother. “I have to work.”
“I thought you didn’t like your job at that casting office?”
“It’s still a job, and I need the money. I knew I’d have to make sacrifices when I moved out here.”
“But a girl belongs with her family during the holidays. Are these sacrifices worth it?”
“It’s all part of the gamble.”
Penny realized the irony of her words even as she spoke them. A gamble. Everything had been a gamble since she’d left the safety of her own little bubble. Even the wineglass before her was a gamble. Would Eliza notice it was missing? Would she care?
A hesitation spanned several long, uncomfortable seconds before Amy continued. “I say this lovingly, Penny. But you gave up a career, a family, a lovely apartment—a home. For what? A crappy apartment, a married man, and an awful job?”
“How would you know my apartment is crappy?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday, Penny Sue Sands. I know how much apartment you can get for the money you’re making, and it isn’t much. Also, your father showed me how to use Google’s street view the other day, and your place looks like a dump.” She paused to catch her breath. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but I feel like my daughter is getting all turned around out there.”
Penny’s chest felt as if it were wrapping around her like a boa constrictor. Beginning to squeeze. Lose air. She couldn’t breathe. “That’s not fair. You don’t know what it’s like being in a new city all by myself, figuring everything out on my own. I was a big fish in a small pond back home, and I had to know if I could be a big fish in an ocean.”
“And what if you’re not cut out for that sort of life?” Amy asked. “Big fish in the ocean are mean. They eat the pretty, nice little fishies.”
“I can handle it.” Penny reached for the borrowed wineglass and twisted it around, swirling the sparkling water she’d poured inside. She watched as the little bubbles gulped for air against the surface. “I’m not as naive as you think.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that.”
Penny made a noncommittal noise in her throat. The wineglass was one of four items she’d taken the last time she’d been at Eliza’s. The time she’d announced to the world that she was pregnant. She’d adopted two wineglasses—one she used, one that was untouched, still wrapped in a sweater and tucked in her purse.
The other two items were some of the riskiest things she’d taken yet. She’d spotted a set at Eliza’s house, one both expensive and sentimental. A set that was likely to be missed, a set that went against all Penny’s rules. She was getting careless.
Penny ran her thumb over the knife’s handle and read the inscription. Roman’s and Eliza Tate’s initials, along with their anniversary date, were carved into the handle. There was a matching spoon that Penny had also taken…just because. The spoon she hadn’t even bothered to unpack from her purse. The knife…she took joy in hoarding it because it wasn’t deserved.
Roman and Eliza’s marriage was doomed. They no longer had a need for the knife to commemorate their union. Roman had gotten Penny pregnant. Whether he took the news well or took the news poorly, it wouldn’t matter. Surely Eliza wouldn’t take him back after that.
“Then tell me, is it working?” Penny’s mother startled her back to reality. “Are you finding yourself out there?”
Penny fell silent. The truth was that she hadn’t found herself at all. If anything, she’d lost more than she’d found. Bits of her had scattered, torn apart like wet tissue paper stomped across the city’s dreary streets, shards of color left to drift in muddy gutters.
She wondered if she could ever be whole again. If someone could scoop up all those scattered bits of tissue and papier-mâché her back together into something bigger, stronger, bolder, more colorful than ever before. It had to be possible. Otherwise, how could she support herself, let alone a child?
It is possible, Penny determined, reminding herself that life hadn’t been entirely awful since she’d arrived. She pictured bits of beauty that belonged exclusively to her: a bouquet of fresh flowers from Anne, a thoughtful text from Ryan, the wonder and awe over the whisper of new life growing inside her.
Penny could recover. She could gather the broken pieces, the torn shreds. With a bit of glue and patience and support, she could be beautiful again. The ripped and torn pieces wouldn’t be discarded; they’d be woven into the person she would become.
“I think I’m on the right track,” Penny said softly. “But to find myself, I think I have to lose myself first. And I don’t know how to manage that.”
“Oh, honey.” Her mother’s voice broke.
“I can’t explain everything just yet,” Penny said, barely holding it together. “Trust me for a little while longer. I have to go now. I’ll talk to you later.”
Penny hung up, emotionally drained from the conversation. She glanced at the time. Nearly 10:00 p.m., which meant class would be letting out shortly. Obviously, Penny wasn’t in attendance. She hadn’t seen Roman since she’d been inside his house two days before.
She hadn’t known what to expect after Eliza broke the baby news inside the Tate residence. The home Eliza still apparently shared with Roman. Penny had known the two were living together, and while she’d thought it was odd, she had tried to understand. Or she had pretended to at least.
But then Eliza had called Roman honey and darling that afternoon, and ever since, Penny had been unable to shake the feeling that she was missing something. That her world wasn’t quite right.
